370 History of Inland Transport 



On page 114 I have told how, in the early part of the six- 

 teenth century, the local authorities of Worcester, Gloucester 

 and other towns on the Severn sought to raise funds for their 

 local exchequers by taxing the traders who used the river 

 for the transport of their commodities ; and I have further 

 told how, in 1532, it was enacted that any person attempting 

 to enforce such toll or tax should be fined forty shillings. 

 But a practice held in the sixteenth century to be unjust in it- 

 self as well as prejudicial to the interests of trade, and penalised 

 by the Legislature accordingly, is considered quite right and 

 proper, and receives express legislative sanction, in the 

 twentieth century, though the local authorities upon whom 

 the toll-privilege is conferred to-day may do no more to help 

 the railways than Worcester and Gloucester and the other 

 Severn towns did to help the river traffic and that was 

 nothing at all. 



One result of the power thus given to local authorities 

 to bleed the railway companies as an easy and convenient 

 method of providing themselves with funds is that in a large 

 number of parishes throughout the country a railway company 

 pays the bulk of the rates, even though it may not even have 

 a railway station in the place. 



In Chapter IV of my book on " Railways and their Rates " 

 I have given a table showing that in a total of 82 parishes, 

 divided into four groups, the proportion of local rates paid by 

 the London and North- Western Railway Company ranges 

 from 50 per cent to 86-9 per cent, although in 53 of the 

 parishes the company have no station. In a further table I 

 specify sixteen parishes in which the area of the same com- 

 pany's property ranges from four to fifty-eight acres, or from 

 1-3 per cent to 5-1 per cent of the whole of the land in the 

 parish, while the proportion which the railway assessment 

 bears to that of the entire parish ranges from 66-9 per cent to 

 86-1 per cent. 



Being thus enabled to depend for the greater part of their 

 revenue on railway companies, who are given the privilege 

 of paying but are denied the privilege of representation or of 

 having any voice in the way the money they contribute shall 

 be spent, there are local communities which show the greater 

 readiness to carry out comparatively costly lighting, drainage, 

 education, road improvement or other such schemes because 



